Waiting for Edith
by Loveedith
Summary: Told by Bertie himself. Starts with Bertie at the bar at Rules. Fearing Edith won't come. Continues from there, I haven't decided for how long. But he does some more waiting later on, doesn't he, until he finally waits for Edith at the altar in Downton Church. Perhaps that will be the last chapter?
1. Waiting

I'm sitting here at the bar at Rules and Lady Edith is ten minutes late.

Ten minutes is only ten minutes, it is still early, but in spite of that I have started to fear that she will not come at all.

I got here early, I didn't want her to have to wait for me, so I've been here more than half an hour already.

I ordered something to drink while I wait, to calm down my nerves, but they only seem to get worse. I don't know what has happened to me. I'm nervous about meeting her as well as nervous that she won't come.

...

Why doesn't she come? Didn't she intend to come in the first place?

Perhaps she was only annoyed that I recognised her after more than half a year. But she seemed friendly enough. Although she didn't recognise _me_ at first.

I'm sure I don't mean anything whatsoever to her.

But I was so happy to meet her again like that. Because _she_ means quite a lot to _me_. In fact I've been thinking about her constantly since that day at Brancaster. I just can't stop thinking about her. It is so unlike me, I do wonder what has happened to me.

It was a lovely day, and her presence made it lovelier. A lovely day with a lovely girl.

That day - she was so friendly and so beautiful. So fascinating. So very inquisitive, but still a little bit shy. She was easy to talk to and I felt she was really interested in what I said. That whole day and evening was enchanted, and thinking back on it so many times through the months has perhaps made it even more enchanted than it was when it happened.

...

But - Lady Edith is an Earl's daughter. She is the owner of a magazine. Why should she take any interest at all in someone like me? A poor land agent with nothing to offer and no real prospects.

...

Sixteen minutes late - I will probably be sitting here - hoping against hope that she will turn up - until they close Rules this evening.

But I can't believe she won't come. I'm sure she is too polite to do a thing like that. If she hadn't wanted to see me again she could simply have said no to that drink.

So I still hope she will come. Just for a drink and a talk, of course, but then I can perhaps persuade her to have dinner with me.

...

Perhaps she has had an accident...

That is a fearful thought. I do hope nothing bad has happened to her! That would be really terrible.

But she can't have had an accident, can she? She _must_ be alright.

I'd much prefer that she just has stood me up.

...

Most probably she has simply forgotten all about me. People tend to do that. She intended to come, but then she simply forgot. She will feel a little embarrassed when she remembers it - if she ever does - and that will be all.

And I will never see her again.

...

At the same time I feel that there must be some meaning in me bumping into her like that. That it was meant to happen.

I have tried to get over her for half a year without succeeding. Then I suddenly see her. That _has_ to mean something.

At least this could give me a chance. A chance to get to know her a little better. And then, maybe, maybe...no, I don't dare to hope for more than that to begin with.

A chance to get to know her a little better. That is all I ask for.

To begin with...

...

She is almost twenty minutes late now - who am I fooling - of course she won't come.

But - there she is!

And my heart thumps so I can almost hear it.

* * *

AN: Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment!

...

I'm writing _Pushing_ _my luck_ in first person for Edith, and I enjoy that, so I thought I should try to do the same with Bertie. Which I find even more difficult.


	2. Meeting

Lady Edith has actually come! I just can't believe it. This is much too good to be true.

She will probably agree to marry me also, if I just dare to pop the question now. Well, probably not. And I can't do that anyhow, of course. But it's a nice thought.

"I'm so, so sorry. Believe me, if you knew what I'm living through, you'd forgive me", she says.

"I forgive you anyway." Of course I do. I think I can forgive her anything right now, just because she did come here. I have never been so happy to see anyone as I was when I saw her coming up to me right now.

"The thing is I can't have a drink. I'd love to, but I can't. My editor has walked out. I have to get the magazine to the printers by four in the morning. So it's sandwiches and coffee and work until dawn."

Ah. She can't have a drink. That's a pity. But this sounds even better.

Coffee and sandwiches and work until dawn. If that is what she has to do then that is what I want to do. So, now I'll not only have a chance to spend the evening with her, I actually have a chance to spend the night with her! In a matter of speaking, of course, but still.

And I couldn't ask for a better chance to get to know her than to see her at work.

"All right", I say while getting some money out to pay for my drink.

"You're a darling. Thank you. Do telephone me if and when you're up in London again!"

Then she seems ready to leave again.

So, I'm a darling now! It's really nice to have her call me that, I hope it's not for the last time. But of course she has misunderstood me.

"No, I meant all right, I'll come with you", I say.

"Come with me where?" She sounds surprised.

"Back to the office. I can make coffee. I can fetch sandwiches. I can... carry bits of paper around. Shouldn't we get going?"

"Aren't you having dinner somewhere? I thought that's why you hadn't suggested it", she asks.

"No, I didn't think you'd accept dinner. I planned to ask you halfway through the drink." So now she knows that I want to spend more time with her. And that I didn't really believe that she wanted to spend _her_ time with _me_.

"Right, well, we should get back", she says.

In that moment I am thrilled just because I'm allowed to come with her to the office.

I'm really getting more and more crazy about her.

* * *

AN: Thank you for reading. Thank you for the kind reviews to last chapter! Please leave a comment!

...

Someone wrote a comment to that picture of Bertie waiting at the bar, a comment about Harry Hadden-Paton not being able to sit comfortably at a bar.

I think that remark describes exactly what a good actor he is.

Bertie is the one who isn't comfortable and Harry is acting that out brilliantly. Bertie here is not a man relaxing with a drink at a bar. He is a man who thinks he has been pushing his luck just by asking Edith out for a drink - the woman he loves and whom he considers to be so much superior to him in almost every way. Now she is a little bit late and he fears she won't come.

I think Harry has manged perfectly to 'step into Bertie's life and be real'. In this scene and in so many other. Some of them very relaxed, like the one in the office sofa some hours later, when Bertie has got his confidence back since Edith _did_ come and he has managed to be useful to her during the night.


	3. Working

It's midnight and I'm not feeling the slightest bit tired.

We are having a quick break together, all four of us, drinking a new kettle of coffee and eating some of the remaining sandwiches.

It has been an interesting evening and we have made quite a bit of progress with the magazine. Edith is more and more confident that we will be getting everything ready by four this morning. I am so pleased that I have been able to be of help to her.

There has been some other progress as well - she is no longer Lady Edith, and I am no longer Mr Pelham. Working together like this made those titles seem absurd. So we are simply Edith and Bertie for each other now, and that feels like a giant step in the right direction.

It makes us seem much more equal, although I am of course still aware that we really aren't.

...

I was surprised to see that only Audrey, the secretary, was there to do the editing job together with Edith herself. I hadn't realised how few people they are.

The articles, drawings, photos and so on are made by freelancers.

The only other person present at the office when we arrived there was Sammy, the errand boy. Which was a bit of a disappointment to me, because I had hoped that I would be allowed to take on that work. He was sent out to buy the sandwiches, and I wasn't even permitted to pay for them. Edith insisted that they were on the house, or rather magazine. Well - at least I was allowed to make the first kettle of coffee, while Edith and Audrey discussed how to manage the actual editing work.

I worried that I wouldn't be able to do anything useful, but I really had nothing to worry about. Because Edith found things for me to do.

...

Edith herself had started as a journalist by writing a column for the magazine while it was still run by the late Michael Gregson. He had read an article about women's suffrage that she had written for the Times and been impressed by her writing.

Well, I guess that the article must have been rather good to have been published in the Times. I have to ask her if she has a copy that I can read later on.

Gregson had taught Edith how to do the lay out of the magazine, which proved to be useful now. He had told her because she was interested - that lovely girl is interested in so many things - but also because he wanted her to be able to fill in for him if he ever needed to go away.

What remained to do tonight was to decide which of the articles and pictures they had got that they would publish in this issue and then spread those out on the pages, to decide what to put on the front page, to write the headlines for most of the articles, to decide where to put the text and the illustrations on every page and to glue all of that into their right places.

...

Edith first gave me a very interesting lecture on how a magazine is made, technically. Then she put me in charge of the gluepot, telling me how to glue the articles and illustrations onto the copy. She let me show that I could do it properly on a bit of waste paper, and after that I was allowed to do the real thing.

I'm very proud to have her approval of what I did. One after one she let me glue every page after the layout was decided. I think I have really managed to save her a lot of time doing it. The first ones she examined very carefully, but after that she trusted my work.

I guess that glueing is one of the most menial tasks in magazine-editing, but Edith says the editor usually does it himself while thinking about the lay out for the next page. Besides, it wasn't the only thing she let me do. She asked me for advice on things, what pictures to use, and so on. I think she is happy to have me here. I was even allowed to put a couple of extra lines into an article that was too short to fill up the page it was intended for.

So there will be a few lines actually written by me published in this weeks issue!

...

Actually, I quite enjoy being bossed by Edith. I also enjoy watching her working. She is so concentrated on what she is doing. It lets me concentrate on looking at her. She looks so lovely.

It is so inspiring to see how much she cares for what she does, how anxious she is to do a good job.

I feel like kissing Edith every time she looks at me. So it's lucky that Audrey and Sammy are here to stop me from making a fool of myself. I know I will do that sooner or later anyhow - both make a fool of myself and kiss her - and that will probably be the end of it all. But until then I can at least make myself believe that she is fond of me.

...

I love Edith, even more than I did before, and the prospect of spending another four hours working with her is just wonderful.

Life has been good to me today, letting me meet her like that.

* * *

AN: Thank you for reading! Thank you so much for all the very friendly comments! I do appreciate every one of them!

...

I do agree that Laura and Harry look very believable together as Edith and Bertie. I would love to see them playing a couple again in something different.

...

Edith says something to Mr. Skinner about last month's issue. I still prefer to let it be a weekly magazine, so I choose to ignore that. She really wanted to say _one of_ last month's issues, in my story here.


	4. Sleeping

It's half past five in the morning now, and I'm lying in my bed at Hexham house, tossing and turning and quite unable to sleep. I always sleep here when I'm in London. In fact, looking over the house and ordering any necessary repairs is usually part of my business in London.

I'm alone in the house, I never bring any servants or open it up. Peter seldom opens it up either. A big house that is empty most of the year really seems like a waste, but Peter won't hear of selling it, and off course it is convenient both for him and me to have a bed here when we are in London.

I've set the alarm at 9, then I will get dressed and pack my last things before I go out to have breakfast at a café. After that I will catch the twelve o'clock, as I told Edith. And then I go back to Brancaster.

But I know I have to meet Edith again very soon. So I know I have to go back to London soon. Or else I will go mad...

...

It has been a remarkable night.

...

After Sam was sent away with the finished pages, Audrey went to fix some new coffee. Edith and I sank down on the big leather sofa together. We were sitting quite a bit apart, but I put my right leg over my left and she put her left leg over her right, so our feet were very much closer than we had dared to put our behinds.

I wonder if she did that on purpose - I certainly did. I fiddled with the idea of touching her foot with my shoe, but in the end I didn't do it. It didn't seem a very romantic thing to do - I'd much rather put my arm around her - and also I was afraid of scaring her away.

I love Edith. I love her and I think that she at least likes me. But I know I don't have much to offer - I should probably give her up altogether, but I can't. And I don't want to. Not until she tells me to leave her alone, and I don't want that to happen any time soon.

I'd better not push my luck. So I just smiled at her.

"Well, you did it", I said.

" _We_ did it", she said. "I really am so grateful."

That sounded good, I had managed to be of help to her. Perfect!

"Are you an editor now? Does this count in your profession as a sort of baptism of blood?" I asked.

"I don't know what will happen next. But it's nice to know I can do it if I have to."

"You certainly can." And yes, she had been very impressive that night, the way she had handled it all.

"I won't though. Not yet. I'll put someone in charge as a caretaker. Then I'll think."

So, if she decides to live in London and edit the magazine herself? Could that fit in with my life? If we marry?

"In the end, the question must be are you a country woman or a townie," I said.

I had to know, because - well - I am definitely a country man. But if I could have her I think I would be willing to change even that.

"It's more than that", she said simply. "I know now I need a purpose. That's what I've learned. I can't just lead one of those purposeless lives."

That is wonderful, too. Do I love her? Yes! Perhaps I should tell her? No, not yet.

"You inspire me", I said instead.

That was when it started to get odd.

"Not many people would say that", she said with an embarrassed smile. What had given a resourceful woman like her such low self esteem, I wondered.

"They would if they knew you", I told her. Then we looked at each other in silence and I knew I just had to kiss her and tell her what a wonderful woman I think she is.

Just then Audrey came back with the coffee and the spell was broken, which was perhaps as well. We talked a little more while we had our coffee, then her taxi arrived and she and Audrey went off in it and I walked home to Hexham house.

...

It seems impossible to sleep tonight. I heard somewhere that you need less sleep when you have just fallen in love, so perhaps that explains it. You need less sleep when you are in love or when you have a new baby, even as a father. I guess that is another kind of love.

I don't know what got me thinking about babies - or, well - off course I do.

* * *

AN: Thank you for reading! Thank you for the lovely reviews! I still want to finish all my stories, hope you want to keep reading!

...

I rewatched the scenes from the night at the magazine and noticed that there were two men there in addition to Bertie. So it is a little AU to only have Sam and Audrey in this story. I won't change it, though.


	5. Writing

I have realised that I am MAD about Edith. I really am.

Since I saw her in London she hasn't been out of my thoughts a single moment. Not when I am awake, and not even when I am sleeping.

She keeps popping up in my dreams. I have dreamt that I am kissing her at least half a dozen times. I have to remind myself that I have never done it, not for real. Those dreams are so vivid.

How is this going to end?

I don't know but I will get mad for real if I can't see her again soon.

And preferably kiss her.

For real. If I only dare to...

...

So, what am I going to do to make Edith want to see me again?

It is up to me now, and I have to think about something better than bumping into her in London again. That may take years before it happens again.

A letter? A phone call?

A telegram?

Or just go up to Downton Abbey, take her in my arms and kiss her. Sweep her off her feet.

Perhaps she would like that, but I would never dare to. I can't kiss her if there is a risk that her family might see me. Not until I know that she wants me to.

And a telegram - that would be a little too dramatic. People always expect bad news when they get a telegram. And what would I say in it?

 _I love you? I would like to kiss you?_

I do, don't I. It's no lie, and I am not ashamed of it. But I'm afraid of scaring her away.

A letter then? Perhaps.

Or even better, a phone call? That would probably be the best. Ask her when she is next in London, and then say, oh, thats perfect, I will be there at exactly the same time. And ask her out for that drink or even for dinner.

So that is settled then. Give her a call.

I just have to give her a call. What on earth am I waiting for?

...

I have tried for three days now to call Edith on the phone, but I simply can't manage to get myself to do it. I'm a much bigger coward than I ever thought possible.

Which, I guess, goes to show how extremely important she is to me, but still. I'm not exactly proud of myself.

Well, it has to be a letter then.

 _Dear Edith,_

 _thank you for our wonderful night together!_

I hope that will make her smile. At least it will probably prevent her from showing my letter to anybody else.

What more?

 _It was very interesting and I learned a lot of new things._

 _I would like very much to meet you again. I'm going to London next week...  
_

Every word is so difficult to write down. It feels like a real struggle. I guess I'm afraid of getting a polite letter back. Thanking me for my help with the magazine but turning down the invitation. In a way that tells me not to ask her again.

Ever.

I don't know how I could go on living after that.

But she _did_ ask me to tell her when I was in London next time. And that was even before I had helped her that night.

Besides, I'm just being stupid, I guess. If I don't ask her out I don't risk getting turned down. But if I don't ask her I will never get her either.

So I will keep writing, until I get the letter the way I like.

...

Five hours later and the letter to Edith is finally sent off by the afternoon post. Before I have time to change my mind.

Now I only have to wait.

* * *

AN: Thank you for reading! Thank you for the nice comments to last chapter!


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